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Spring 2010 |
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I Rossetti e l’Italia – The Rossettis and Italy |
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[International
Conference, Vasto, 10th – 12th December 2009] |
Review by Mirko Menna |
(translated from the Italian
by Elisa Bizzotto) |
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The Rossetti
European Center’s highlight for the year 2009 was a three-day conference
devoted to the relationship between the Rossetti family and Italy. The
Center, located in Vasto at “Casa Rossetti”, where Gabriele was born and the
cultural roots of his famous children reside, is directed by its founder
Gianni Oliva, Full Professor of Italian Literature at “G. D’Annunzio”
University of Chieti-Pescara. 2009 was a year of intense and fruitful
activity for the Center, thanks to the creation of a Digital Library where
the Rossettis’ books are housed and published (www.centrorossetti.eu) and the
establishment of Italian Language and Culture Courses for foreigners in
collaboration with the Universities of Yale, Birmingham, Caen-Basse Normandie
and Ole Miss. The Center aims at drawing academic attention to the Rossettis’
microcosm, developed at a time in which Italian culture was influential and
authoritative in Europe. |
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Hence the idea of delving into the
osmotic cultural exchanges between Italy and Great Britain, Gabriele’s land
of emigration and election which gave its ripest fruits in the creative
geniuses of Dante Gabriel and Christina, as well as in William Michael’s
contextual contributions. It seems therefore appropriate to begin an account
of the Conference with In Nome del
Padre (“In the name of the father”), the title of the first session in
the opening day, and follow the textual path traced by Michael Caesar (University
of Birmingham), who investigated Gabriele’s juvenile production (1820-21)
as improvvisatore. This label
accompanied him on his arrival in London, where his collection Sognar libertà (“Dreaming freedom”)
became a poetic and political manifesto. After escaping from Naples to Malta,
Rossetti’s last journey towards freedom coincided with a period of sacrifice
and reconstruction at a professional and personal level. The years 1826-1831
became crucial, as Tobia Toscano
(University of Naples Federico II) explained: “Divided between the care
of his family, with four children born two years from each other, the
difficulties of private teaching and the feverish work at the exegetic system
of Dante’s Comedy, those years of
hardships were even harder for the publishing failure of the two volumes of
the Comento analitico all'Inferno (“Analytical comment to
the Inferno”) and exacerbated by
Antonio Panizzi’s and John J. Blunt’s unkind reviews, which demolished
Rossetti’s clever exegesis. If one adds to this his disappointment for being
passed over as Professor of Italian at University College (1828) and the
definitive death of any hope to return to Naples (once again for an ode which
celebrated the 1831 Riots), Giuseppe Verdi’s famous definition “jail years”
seems appropriate to him too”. William
Spaggiari (University of Milan) concentrated on Gabriele Rossetti’s poetic
apprenticeship and on his tribute to Giuseppe Bonaparte in the volume Poesie varie (“Miscellaneous poems”,
1806). Spaggiari considered the stylistic and formal aspects of Rossetti’s
celebrative lyrics, rich in original solutions partly abandoned in maturity.
Spaggiari highlighted the collection’s publishing history and fortune, as
well as the presence of tradition and the influence of models like Metastasio
and Monti. He underlined how “far from being a simple exercise of consensus literature, Poesie varie represents a canzoniere
not devoid of compactness, in which the exaltation of the monarch is
associated to heroic, mythological and historical themes (insisting on
Columbus), within the frame of the deeper considerations of the patriotic and
religious verse of his English period”. The analysis of Raffaele Giglio (University of Naples “Federico II”) probed into
Rossetti’s enigmatic interpretation in Comento
all’Inferno. Giglio interpreted the allegories in the work as expressions
of the secret language of the Ghibellini, Dante’s party. Reading the Comento contributes to “notice how, as
time went by, Rossetti somewhat changed the interpretation of some allegories
in order to give stability to a hermeneutic system that, however fascinating
in its amphibology, could not always explain
the images and characters created by Dante”. Silvia Fabrizio Costa
(Université de Caen-Basse Normandie) investigated historical enigmas in her paper Eugène Aroux, profilo d’un plagiario? (“Eugène Aroux, profile of a
plagiarist?”), centered on the author of Dante
hérétique révolutionnaire et socialiste, subtitled Révélations d’un catholique sur le Moyen Âge (1853). While critic Pompeo Giannatonio thought that Aroux plagiarized
Rossetti, Fabrizio Costa re-evaluated him “because after more than thirty
years, when reading Giannantonio’s discoveries and considering Arnoux’s work,
which had been completely forgotten among the minor writings on French Dante
studies in the first half of the 19th century, one realizes that there are still
cultural threads connecting Arnoux with modern exegetic traditions and that
his work, either plagiarism or boundless admiration, must be seen as a
necessary contribution to a typically French modality of approaching Dante”. Vito Moretti (University “G. D’Annunzio”
of Chieti) considered Gabriele’s Rossetti’s poetry in “Per simboli e per visioni” (“Through Symbols and Visions”)
in the light of Francesco De Sanctis’s criticism. De Sanctis envisaged in
Dante ideological meanings that allowed him to create a model for the
Risorgimento. Yet, unlike Rossetti, he seemed to leave out of his
interpretation “fantastic and symbolic” aspects. |
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London became the battlefield for
literary tenzoni among illustrious
emigrants and exiles. According to Valeria
Giannantonio (University “G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti) the duel between
Foscolo and Rossetti invites to “a meditation within Italian literature on a
type of poetry sometimes considered from the perspective of its separation
from the fatherland. A comparative analysis of Foscolo’s and Rossetti’s
discourses reveals contrasts as well as affinities”. Marilena Pasquini (Liceo Scientifico “R. Mattioli” of Vasto)
emphasized the socio-political elements in Gabriele’s Carteggi. Documents dating back to 1809
seem to prove that his adherence to Freemasonry while in Naples contributed
to his development of the liberal ideals of the Risorgimento. They also
contributed to his belief that “at the basis of the Commedia and of the principal works of Italian literature of the
origins lay Masonic concepts and principles, the fruit of the millenary
tradition of Western exotericism”. Luigi Murolo (Liceo Scientifico “R.
Mattioli” of Vasto) concluded the session dedicated to the Padre by focusing on one of the most
significant background figures in the
Rossetti family, i.e. Gabriele’s maternal cousin Teodorico Pietrocola
Rossetti (1825-1883). A follower of Mazzini, Pietrocola was sentenced
to death for his involvement in the Neapolitan Riots and flew to London,
where he befriended Lewis Carroll (and translated Alice in Wonderland into Italian). At the Rossettis’ he met Piero Guicciardini, who led him to
embrace Evangelicalism. Back to Italy in order to “preach the Gospel”, he was
among the founders of the Chiese dei
Fratelli (“Churches of the Brethren”) from Piedmont to Tuscany, animated
by the “Lord’s workmen”. In 1861 he published the first literary biography of
Gabriele Rossetti spreading the latter’s fame in his home-country. |
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Franco
Marucci (Università “Ca’ Foscari” – Venezia)
opened the session on Dante
Gabriel, Christina and the other Rossettis as Figli dell’Esilio (“Children
of exile”). His paper on Dante Gabriel
Rossetti traduttore e tradotto (“Dante Gabriel Rossetti translator and
translated”) focused on the Dante Gabriel’s reception through the
translations of his works in Italy from the turn of the 19th century to
present days, but also through “the aesthetics and praxis of translation in
Rossetti as a translator and anthologizer of Due and Trecento Italian poetry”
whose “epigraph might be the saying translator-betrayer”. Giuliana Pieri (Royal Holloway,
University of London) concentrated on Dante Gabriel’s reception in fin-de-siècle
Italian painters and signaled a “Rossetti mania in art criticism and
in painting which encompassed the first decades of the 20th century”. From
Word to Image and Image to Word, Dante Gabriel’s artistic expressiveness is a
virtuous circle under a centripetal force that absorbs the stimuli of both
English and Italian cultures and a centrifugal force spreading ideas by
Italian critics of Pre-Raphaelite poetry in the two last decades of the 19th
century, as explained by Mario Cimini (University “G. D’Annunzio”
of Chieti). “The slow, often superficial diffusion of the aesthetic
principles of Pre-Raphaelitism in our country – Cimini maintained –
corresponds, from a critical perspective, to an intermittent, segmentary
history which does not lead to any authentic debate. And yet, if one analyzes
the contributions of such careful readers of the poetry of D.G. Rossetti and
some friends of his like Luigi Gamberale, Carlo Placci, Enrico Nencioni,
Arturo Graf, Antonio Agresti, and Alfredo Galletti,
the response is that of a reception centered on a progressive historicization
of the movement”. Indelible “traces” – as Antonella Di Nallo (University “G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti) called
them – are left by Dante Gabriel
and Pre-Raphaelitism on other aesthetic personalities. These traces undergo
original and multifarious mutations,
as happens in D’Annunzio’s two short theatrical pièces Dream of a Spring Morning and Dream of an Autumn Sunset. “A dense web of symmetries links the
two plays and testifies to a merge of aestheticism and symbolism: the
Botticellian linearism of the spring Dream
and the Giorgionesque of the autumnal Dream,
the dialectics sight-vision, the figuration of the female that passes from
the virginal candor of the maiden to the perverse sexuality of the mature
woman. Once again the analysis of the ‘grammar of the senses’ discloses new
meanings in D’Annunzio texts”. Dante Gabriel’s prose writings – Carla
Chiummo (University of Cassino) argued – influenced D’Annunzio as well as Pascoli. She explained how
“The former’s characteristically precocious knowledge and assimilation of
Rossettian motifs has been long assessed, but the short story Hand and Soul might be useful to
ponder on D’Annunzio’s two-faced re-reading of Rossetti. The latter, whose
Rossettian ascendancies have been much less investigated, shows an even more
interesting and far from provincial knowledge of Pre-Raphaelitism. He
cautiously fathoms Pre-Raphaelites depths not only in his theoretical
writings, but also in his poetry, more markedly meta-literary”. According to Raffaella Antinucci (University
Parthenope of Napoli) Rossetti’s Italian reception at the turn of the
century culminates in Guido Gozzano’s poem “La preraffaellita” (“The
Pre-Raphaelite Woman”) (1903) thanks to “the female characterization, in
which Rossetti’s dualism between spiritual and sensual femininity is revived
and merges in the oxymoronic profile of a woman ‘of lustful beauty’ who
‘flaunts religious pomp’”. Eleonora
Sasso (Università “G. D’Annunzio” of Pescara) traced a growing interest
for Giovanni Boccaccio and the figure of Fiammetta in D. G. Rossetti’s
figurative art back in 1849, a crucial year in his evolution towards a
carnal, Epicurean sensuality. The paintings Bocca baciata (1859), Fiammetta
(1868) and A Vision of Fiammetta
(1878), along with the translation of Boccaccio’s Rime into English, testify to the writer’s influence on Rossetti.
Fabio Camilletti (Berlin Institute for
Cultural Inquiry – University of Birmingham) linked Dante Gabriel’s
notion of art as “cult of the mind” that evolves into solipsism to Gabriele’s
exoteric, Pythagorean idea of “religion of the mind” he formulated for Beatrice di Dante. Camilletti observed
how “The construction of a poetic subjectivity in Vita Nova is adopted by Rossetti to interpret the tensions of the
Victorian “I” and is definitively concretized in The House of Life. An authentic Vita Nova for the Victorian age, the 1881 sonnet sequence
re-elaborates and metamorphoses the Dantesque element of the ‘book of
memory’, becoming a spiritual autobiography, fragmentary and ambiguous”. |
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According to Francesco Marroni (University “G. D’Annunzio” of Pescara) Christina
Rossetti conflates “two poetic traditions which undergo a radical revision,
having in mind an artistic program positing at its centre the discussion of
Victorian poetry in both themes and linguistic and prosodic codes”. Marroni
conducted a profound analysis around the “peculiarity of Christina’s double
cultural matrix, around the exceptionality of the ambience in which she
lived, the almost obsessive elaboration of rhythms and new musicality that
principally drew inspiration from Italian poetic tradition which, starting from Dante and Petrarch, characterized the
crucial stages of her poetics. Christina, however, found her main models in
Tasso and Metastasio who, more than other Italian authors, influenced her
poetic writing at different levels”. Christina grew up in a family with deep
genealogic and cultural connections with Italy. Her household, and
particularly her relationship with her father, are important to understand
the vision of Italy she developed through the years: moving
from a statement such as “I am glad of my Italian blood”. Mariaconcetta Costantini (University “G. D’Annunzio” of Pescara) re-read
Christina’s lyrics and letters which suggest “an idealized attitude towards
Italy, the land as so longed as to become a rhetorical figure condensing
manifold, even contradictory meanings”. The idea of vagheggiare – in its semiotic values – taken from one of letters
to her brother William Michael (“Are
you still vagheggiando Vasto?”) was at the centre of Mirko Menna’s (University
“G. D’Annunzio” of Chieti) investigation of the reasons why the Rossetti
children never visited their father’s hometown, Vasto. The journey was,
however, experienced not only in memories and mythologizing of poetic words
but also in the more banal, simpler idiom connected to the Rossettis’
familiar lexis through sayings, proverbs, pranks and calembours. Puns and wordplay thrive in Goblin Market, translated by Sara
Elena Rossetti and Fabio
Monticelli for the edition published by S. Marco dei Giustiniani (Genoa, 2009). “Attracted, seduced
and definitely conquered” – that is how the authors declared to have been by
a text aiming at reconstructing, not without difficulty, the “fascinating
innocence” of the poem. |
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The last day was devoted to the
Rossettis’ other voices, wrongfully considered minor. Paola Spinozzi (University
of Ferrara) focused on William
Michael Rossetti’s art criticism. Among the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood, William Michael was also editor of The Germ, historian of Pre-Raphaelitism, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s
biographer, custodian of family memories and prolific essay-writer. Moreover
– as Spinozzi interestingly showed – he was a great art historian who
divulged Italian art history in his country. Paolo De Ventura (University of Birmingham) delivered a
stimulating paper on the interpretations of A Shadow of Dante by Francesca Maria Rossetti, Gabriele’s first
daughter scarcely known hitherto. “It is essentially a ‘family book’ ” – De
Ventura underlined – “whose very title calls to mind the most famous poems by
the author’s father, who is also the dedicatee, while the frontispiece and
cover were designed by Dante Gabriel, with
extracts from Dante’s Inferno translated
by William Michael. This did not prevent Maria from being among the very
first women to engage in Dantesque criticism with the first example of
‘Companion to Dante Studies’ and from taking original stances. She not only
refused her father’s mystical and allegorical interpretation, but also Dante
Gabriel’s translation of the Vita Nuova.
She viewed Dante as the archetype of poetry, originally studied the
chronology of the journey and claimed that Beatrice as well as the donna gentile might stand for
biographical experiences”. |
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The debate that followed, much animated
and stimulating, focused on the issues inspired by the papers. The Conference
Proceedings, now in course of publication, will pair the Proceedings of the
1982 Conference I Rossetti tra Italia e
Inghilterra (“The Rossettis between Italy and England”), similarly held
in Vasto under Gianni Oliva’s supervision. The two volumes will represent
fundamental chapters in the historical re-evaluation of the Rossetti family. |
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v
Mirko Menna received his MA in Italian
Literature from the University of Chieti-Pescara “G. D’Annunzio”. He
completed his doctoral studies in Language and Literature of the Italian
Regions and was awarded a Postdoctoral fellowship from the University of
Chieti. He is interested in Italian literature of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, especially Manzoni, Pascoli and Silone. He published Al candido fratello – Carteggio D’Annunzio-Annibale Tenneroni (Lanciano,
Carabba, 2007) and Vite Vissute di
Gabriele D’Annunzio (Lanciano, Carabba, 2009). He
collaborates with several academic journals and with the Centro Europeo di Studi Rossettiani in Vasto (www.centrorossetti.eu). |
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